Presently available in the medical arts are a number of devices providing for different imaging modalities. Each modality has strengths and weaknesses. Generally speaking though, the devices which allow for the greatest and most enhanced imaging detail and resolution are expensive and require a considerable amount of time in order to create the image. Thus, such systems, while quite beneficial, have not been adapted to real time operation.
By way of example only, the presently existing x-ray machines are capable of rendering 3-D images which can be provided in great detail and viewed from multiple angles. These images are, however, generated over an extended period of time. Thus, they are not real time. These images have the advantage of identifying small details which can exist in various locations, throughout the tissue or organ being imaged. Thus, unlike with a single plane image which may miss important tissues due to the fact that the probe is not appropriately located, a 3-D imaging system captures an entire volume.
With a 2-D imaging system, of course the probe may be placed at multiple locations over the desired tissue to be sampled. However, if suspect tissue growths are small, positioning the probe even at successive intervals of millimeters may be not accurate enough to capture such growths which are located between the successive planes imaged by the probe.
Accordingly, it is much easier to search for and identify and thus not miss suspect tissue with a 3-D imaging system than with a 2-D or a single plane imaging system.
Thus, there is a need to provide for an imaging system which can inexpensively and in real time provide an image of an organ or tissue mass so that suspect tissues located therein can be identified.